Tools: Company of Merchant Adventurers of London
Background
Members of the Company of Merchant Adventurers of London were involved in the export of English cloth, especially undyed, white, broadcloth. The MarineLives wiki contains references to a number of London merchants, and English merchants based in Hamburg, Amsterdam, Dordrecht and Rotterdam, who were members of, or connected with, the Company of Merchant Adventurers. The MarineLives project team wants to identify all these references and to pull them together on this wiki page. This will form a finding aid for all researchers interested in the C17th cloth trade, and more broadly in the trade for textiles. It will also serve as an input into the research work of Dr Tom Leng (Sheffield), who is currently writing a book on 'Disorderly Brethren: the Merchant Adventurers of England, c.1588-1688'.
Possible search terms to help identify Merchant Adventurers
Please help the MarineLives team identify members of the Company of Merchant Adventures of London in our 6 million word full text transcription wiki.
Search the wiki, do some sleuthing, and tweet us suggested names and wiki page references. We will add your findings to the wiki, with references and acknowledgement.
Many of the members of the Company of Merchant Adventurers of London will not be identified as such, but can be presumed to be members through a combination of their export trade in cloth (and other goods), their location, their trading partners and secondary information you will need to look for on the web.
Here are some search terms for our wiki you might want to get started with
Cloth
Cloath
Cloth merchant
Cloth-merchant
Adventurer
Merchant + Hamburg
and lots lots more...
Contents
Merchant adventurers resident in London & surrounds
Definite
Sir Nicholas Crispe (b. ?; d. 1666) London merchant[1]
Arthur Tyndale (b. ?; d. ca. 1625) Mercer and Merchant Adventurer of London[2]
Nathaniell Tyndale (b. ?; d. ca. 1631). Mercer and Merchant Adventurer of London[3]
Samuell Tyndale (b. ?; d. ca. 1673). Merchant Adventurer of London[4]
Probable
George Boldero [alt. Baldero] (b. ?; d. ca. 1666). London merchant[5]
Henry Crispe (b. ca. 1608; d. ca. 1654). Merchant and haberdasher. Dealing in cloth and other commodities, which he imported into and exported from Hamburg for twenty years. Given his involvement in cloth, and past long residence in Hamburg, it is possible that Henry Crispe was a member of the Company of the Merchant Adventurers of London, which had a staple in Hamburg. Resident in 1653 in the parish of Saint Antholin Budge Row, London. He had been resident in Hamburg as recently as 1649, and possibly up to the start of war with the Dutch in late 1652.[6] Basil Duke Henning (1983) state that Henry Crispe was married to Elizabeth Biddulph, daughter of Anthony Biddulph (b.?; d. ca. 1651), a London haberdasher.[7] Henry Crispe's first son was the eponymous Henry Crispe (b. ca. 1650, Hamburg; d. 1700), of Aldermanbury, London. The son was educated as a lawyer and became common serjeant iin 1678. He was elected to parliament in 1685.[8] Henry Crispe deposed in the High Court of Admiralty in October 1653. His knowledge was based on twenty years trading from Hamburg and thereabouts "in cloath and divers other sorts of commodities there most vendible and the like for the pasts of Holland before the present troubles in such commodities as were there most advantagious". He suggested that Hamburg merchants tended to transport pepper and spices from Hamburg into the upper parts of Germany, Bohemia, Hungary and some parts of Poland, where better prices could be achieved than at Hamburg.[9]
Possible
Mathew Tindall (b. ?; d. ?ca. 1676). London draper & trader in cloth
- "Mathew Tindall of London, trader in cloth"[10]
Merchant adventurers resident elsewhere in England
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Merchant adventurers resident in the United Provinces
Amsterdam
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Dordrecht
Definite
Henry Boldero [alt. Baldero] (b. ?; d. ca. 1661). Merchant Adventurer of Dordrecht. Treasurer of the Company.[11]
- "the said Mr Henry Baldero is of his this deponents certaine knowledge a native of England, and was borne at Berry in the County of Suffolk, where this deponent was likewise borne and the said Henry Baldero doth here (by this deponent who is his correspondent) pay taxes to this Comonwealth of England for lands which hee hath here in England and is ffree of the Company of the Merchant Adventurers of London and hath bin tresurer of the said company"[12]
Probable
John Boldero [alt. Baldero] (b. ?; d. ca. 1664). Merchant in Dordrecht[13]
Rotterdam
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Merchants resident in Hamburg
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- ↑ PROB 11/319 Mico 1-46 Will of Nicholas Crispe of Hammersmith, Middlesex 05 April 1666
- ↑ PROB 11/147 Clarke 103-147 Will of Arthur Tyndale, Mercer and Merchant Adventure of London 25 November 1625
- ↑ PROB 11/160 St. John 69-138 Will of Nathaniell Tyndale, Mercer and Merchant Adventurer of London 10 December 1631
- ↑ PROB 11/343 Pye 119-167 Will of Samuell Tyndale, Merchant Adventurer of London 13 October 1673
- ↑ PROB 11/319/509 Will of George Boldero, Merchant of London 14 March 1666
- ↑ SP 82/7/f131 Henry Crispe to Walter Frost, Secretary to Council of State 1649 Aug 3
- ↑ http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1660-1690/member/crispe-henry-1650-1700
- ↑ PROB 11/240/613 Will of Henry Crispe, Haberdasher of London 30 May 1654
- ↑ HCA 13/68 f.115r
- ↑ From will of Throckmorton Trotman, London merchant, dated Oct 13, 1661, proved Oct. 24, 1663 in Lothrop Withington, Virginia gleanings in England: abstracts of 17th and 18th-century English wills and administrations relating to Virginia and Virginians : a consolidation of articles from The Virginia magazine of history and biography (XXXX, 1980 (reprint)), p. 58; possibly same Mathew Tindall (alt. Tyndale) as in PROB 11/352 Will of Mathew Tyndale, Draper of London 02 December 1676 Bence 109-158
- ↑ PROB 11/304/17 Will of Henry Boldero, Merchant Adventurer of Dordrecht, Holland 03 April 1661
- ↑ HCA 13/73 f.140r
- ↑ PROB 11/315/49 Will of John Boldero, Merchant in Dordrecht, Holland 16 September 1664
